


Lessons in Pop Culture with Robin and Steve

by whoopswheresmyusername



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 80s movie night, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Coming Out, Does anybody read these, Gen, Movie Night, Probably some Robin angst too, Robin’s mom makes an appearance at one point but not for very long, a lot of swearing actually but it’s fine, i can’t resist bi Steve I’m sorry, ill add tags as I keep writing whoops, post season 3 canon, probably some Steve angst at some point whoops, robin and steve are besties, robin is a great listener, scoops duo, steve has problems and nobody to talk to, there’s some swearing, we’ll see if I want to ignore some season 3 developments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-01 23:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20266498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoopswheresmyusername/pseuds/whoopswheresmyusername
Summary: Steve knows nothing about movies, and he somehow ended up working at a movie store. Now, Robin is determined to educate Steve on the classics, so she set up weekly movie nights where they marathon movies they “borrowed” from their workplace. Deep talks and bonding time ensues.





	1. Family video movie heist

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty short but there’s more coming I swear!

“Steve Harrington!” Keith screams from the front desk.  
Steve looks up from the aisle of movies he’s standing in. “AAAAGH!” He recovers by leaning against the rack. “Yes?”  
“Work the cash register while I take my break.”  
“Sure thing, Keith.” Steve waves him off.  
Keith gives a sneer and lumbers off to the back room.  
“ROBIN!” Keith yells.  
Robin looks up from an issue of some comic with distain. “What. Do you want.”  
“Look after Steve,” he motions to the disaster of a boy in aisle four.  
Robin salutes and rolls her eyes.  
“POPEYE!” She yells, her old nickname for him never really dying, even though their old place of work had quite literally been destroyed.  
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” Steve runs a hand through his hair.  
“Found any movies for movie night?”  
“Uhhhh, this one!” He holds up a tape.  
“What does it say? I have good vision but I can’t see that far, dingus.”  
“Uh-“ He squints. “The Breakfast Club!”  
“Oh, that’s a good one. Put it in the pile.”  
Steve grins and slams it on top of a stack of tapes.  
“What do we have so far?” Robin peers over the top of her comic.  
“Uhhhh,” Steve fumbles with the black plastic. “We have The Breakfast Club, Top Gun, The Goonies... OH OH OH! Star Wars!”  
“Which Star Wars, Harrington?”  
“The one with the teddy bears!”  
“The one that got you this job?”  
Steve pauses to think. “Yeah! Yeah, that one.”  
“Put em in the bag, Harrington. Movie night is tonight, after all.”  
Steve grins and puts them into a drawstring backpack, which he tosses over to robin. He misses horribly, and it lands about ten feet away from where she’s reclined.  
“Nice catch.” Steve says, voice dripping with sarcasm.  
“Your arm needs work, baseball star.” Robin deadpans.  
Steve struts over to where she’s sitting and leans against a nearby shelf.  
“Which one should we watch first?” Robin asks, setting down her comic and propping her legs up on a rack of movies.  
“I want to watch the one with the teddy bears!”  
“Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back?”  
“Yeah! Han Solo is so cool, Harrison Ford has the best smile-“ he stops himself. “What I mean is, his grin is the perfect one! For the cocky, handsome-“  
“Steve? Do you have sometime you need to tell me?” Robin is trying hard not to grin.  
“Forget I said anything about Harrison Ford, okay?”  
“I’ll put a pin in it. We’re gonna talk during movie night, Harrington, mark my words.”  
“Whatever, Buckley.”  
“Before you clock out, remember to take the bag!” Robin yells after him.  
“Okay, okay, okay! Jeez!”  
“See you at five, dingus!”  
“Later, loser!”  
Robin grins as Steve walks through the doors with his bag of un-paid-for VHS tapes.  
“HARRINGTON!” Kevin yells from the back.  
“HE’S GONNA BRING THEM BACK, DON’T WORRY,” Robin yells back.  
“HE BETTER!” Kevin yells helplessly as Steve starts his car and drives off.


	2. The Goonies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first movie Steve picks is a classic. The Goonies, starring a very familiar face....

“Which one do you want to watch first?” Robin shuffles through the pile of VHS tapes laid out on the bed.  
“Don’t care,” Steve mumbles from his position on her desk chair.  
“You picked them out, and you said at the store you wanted to watch Star Wars-“  
“Well I want some variety. Pick whichever one is your favorite and let’s watch that first!”  
“Fine then! The Goonies!”  
“Okay!”  
Robin shuffles off the bed and slides it into the tape deck and hits play.   
“I can’t believe you haven’t watched the Goonies, Harrington. It’s a classic!”  
The screen goes blue for a second, then the title screen pops up.   
“Ready?” Robin looks over to Steve. He nods. “Let the third weekly Harrington-Buckley movie night begin!”  
They sit in silence for a while as the chase through the town plays, but the second that Mikey shows up on screen, Steve loses it.  
“Robin, pause it.”  
“What?”  
“PAUSE THE FUCKING MOVIE ROBIN, PLEASE!”  
She scrambles to the TV set and slams the pause button. Mikey’s face is paused on the screen.  
“What was that?”  
“That- That looks like someone I...”  
“Is... this about what happened last year?”  
Steve swallows hard and nods.  
“Who? Who does it look like?”  
“Bob. He... used to work at radio shack before-“ Steve turns away.  
“Before?”  
“A lot of shit happened last year. And I mean a lot. Breaking up with Nancy was the most public of it, but the rest...” he trails off. “The rest, well, you wouldn’t believe me if you hadn’t been with me at starcourt.” Steve smiles sadly.  
“That... thing. That wasn’t the first thing to happen, was it?”  
“No.”  
“You’re kidding.”  
“I really wish I wasn’t.”  
The glow from the screen highlights the tear tracing its way down Steve’s cheek.  
“Steve? Are you okay?”  
He wipes it away with a dismissive wave. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”  
“Do you want to talk about it? Some crazy shit has gone down in the past week alone, and that added on top of whatever the hell happened last year-“  
“Robin?”  
“Yeah?”  
“I’m sorry I dragged you into the weird shit that happens here. The real stuff. It’s my fault.”  
“Steve, I got myself into this. I want to be here for you. I want to help you. As probably one of the closest friends you’ve ever had,” she pauses. “That’s your age.” She adds with a giggle. Steve runs a hand through his hair and smiles a little.   
“I’ll tell you about it some other time. We should finish the movie.”  
“Are you sure? I’m a good listener, I know four languages, took band for years and recently learned some phrases in Russian!” She jokes, trying to get Steve to smile again.  
Steve doesn’t react. “Yeah, I’m sure.”  
“Okay.” She presses the play button and the rest of the movie plays.  
Steve sometimes makes some comments about how the abandoned house and the criminals are similar to the Russians, and how the group of kids is like him and the group he looks after sometimes.  
At the end, while the credits are rolling, Steve shifts to look at robin.   
“Hey, Robin?”  
“Yeah?”  
“That was a good movie. I’m sorry for interrupting it with my whole... trauma speech.”  
“You didn’t. It’s okay to talk about your feelings. I know that sounds cheesy as shit, but it helps. That’s what therapists are for.”  
“Yeah, but my parents won’t pay for one. And I don’t want anybody finding out that I’m seeing a shrink.”  
“You are out of school, Steve. Nobody cares anymore. Popularity is only important in school, and even then, what’s the point of being popular? If you have friends that actually care about you, popularity is unimportant.”  
Steve laughs sadly. “You sound like Dustin.”  
“Well, he does have a point. He knows more than you do, Harrington. You should listen to him sometimes.”  
Steve thinks about this for a bit.   
“Which movie do you want to see next?” Robin asks him, holding up some tapes.  
“What do you have?”   
“Star Wars, the breakfast club, Top Gun...”   
“How about the breakfast club? That looks cool,” Steve says half-heartedly.   
“Sounds good.” Robin slides it into the tape deck and presses play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so tired  
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter! I’ll keep making new chapters when I have time to!


	3. The Breakfast Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The classic movie The Breakfast Club is one that Steve Harrington has somehow not seen. Steve relates way too much with Andrew, and Robin brings up Han Solo.

Steve was still sulking when the movie started to play. Robin gets it. He was reminded of shit that scarred him. That’s hard to shake off. After the first ten or so minutes, Steve starts to cheer up. He makes some comments on how he relates a lot to Andrew the jock.   
“Look, it’s you!” He says, pointing to Allison. “The basket case!”  
“Hardy har, Popeye.” She punches his arm playfully.  
Then it gets to the deep talk. Where Andrew starts ranting about his dad, where Brian confessed that he attempted suicide, where Allison says she’s a compulsive liar. That scene always makes Robin emotional. When she looks over to Steve, he’s sobbing.  
“Holy shit, Harrington!” She says through a stuffy nose and tears eyes.  
“Holy shit yourself, Buckley!” Steve giggles, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose into a tissue.  
“We’re both so sappy, oh my god.”  
“Hey, it struck a chord with both of us!”  
“Who do you relate to most in that scene?”  
“Andrew. Our dads are basically the same person. We might be the same person.” Steve scrubs his face and sniffles.  
“Yeah. I had a feeling you would relate to Andrew,” Robin smiles, a tear dripping off her nose.  
“Robin?”  
“Yeah, Harrington?”  
“I hate my dad.”  
“Most of us do.”  
“No, I really hate my dad,” Steve turns to face her. “And he hates me.”  
“I mean, that’s probably a stretch, but-“  
“He said it. A lot.”  
“What?”  
“He’s said he hates me. He never hits me, but sometimes he says things that feel worse that being hit.” Steve sounds like a child. He sounds scared. He’s approaching it and explaining it like he’s never told anyone before. He probably hasn’t.  
“Steve-“  
“He calls me a pussy and a queer when I don’t do something he wants me to, and he wants me to be tough and cool all the time. It’s-“ Steve chokes. “It’s so hard. It’s so, so hard, Robin.”  
Robin doesn’t know how to respond. The movie is still playing, so she just hits pause.  
That’s when she hears the door slam.  
“Is that-?”  
“Shit! My mom!” Robin scrambles around, hiding papers and books and clambering over Steve in the process.  
“Does... she know?” Steve says as robin stuffs a small rainbow flag under her pile of dirty clothes.  
“What do you think?” Robin buffs as she collapses on her bed as her mom walks in.  
“Hey, honey!”  
“Mmm.” Robin grumbles, looking up at her mom.  
“I don’t think I know you,” Mrs Buckley says, motioning to Steve.  
“I’m Steve Harrington. I graduated from Hawkins high just this year, and used to work at Scoops Ahoy with Robin-“  
“Oh.” Robin’s mom looks down at her daughter, concern on her face. “Is he-“  
“Yes, THE Steve Harrington. I know. He’s okay now.”  
“Oh,” Mrs Buckley fidgets a bit with the hem of her dress. “And you’re just-“  
“He’s just a friend, mom. We’re watching The Breakfast Club. He’s never seen it.”  
“Oh, okay. Well,” she looks around then nods. “I’m going to be in my room if you need anything. Good night, sweetie.”  
“Night, mom.”  
Mrs Buckley closes the door slowly.  
“I get the feeling that your mom doesn’t like me a lot,” Steve comments after a few minutes of silence.  
“No shit, Harrington. You were a grade-A douche for years. You beat up a lot of my band friends. Of course she knows. I tell her every-“ she pauses. “I tell her almost everything.”  
Steve pauses to think. “I’m sorry.”  
“For what?”  
Steve does air quotes. “For being a ‘grade-A douche for years’. I don’t want to be remembered as that. It’s like Andrew says. My dad makes me feel like I have to. And I hate it. I would yell about it, but Andrew stole all my words.” Steve looks away and chuckles dryly. “At least he knew how to tell people. You’re the only one I’ve told.”  
“Steve,-“  
“Whatever. Like Nancy and Jonathan used to say to each other, we’ve got shared trauma.”  
“Platonically, though, right?” Robin jokes.  
Steve laughs. “Yeah. Platonically.”  
“Now, about our Han Solo conversation earlier...”  
“Oh come ON! Really? Now?”  
“Yes, NOW!”  
“Why? Can’t we just let it go?”  
“Not this lesbian. Not today.”  
“Robin-“  
“So Han Solo is hot, huh?”  
“Sure. Can we keep watching the movie now?-“  
“You’re dodging the question, Dingus Maximus.”  
“I have every right to! It’s my business whose poster I decide to hang in my room.”  
“Han Or Leia?”  
“Wait, is this a trick question?”  
“Han. Or. Leia?”  
“Well-“  
“And don’t pick Leia just because that’s the one you’d pick around other people. A not-so-gentle reminder that I am not other people.” Robin pokes his arm.  
“Well...”  
“Is that indecisiveness I see?”  
“Shut up, Robin.”  
“You know that once I start talking I don’t stop, Harrington. Get used to it.”  
“Is it bad if I said both?”  
“Both?”  
“Yeah, both. On like a scale of hotness, they’re both a solid seven or eight. Happy now?”  
“Yes. Yes I am.”  
“You aren’t weirded out at all?”  
“No, why?”  
“Just-“ Steve sighs. “The last time I said something along those lines, I was ten and I got pounded.”  
“Jesus Christ.”  
“Yep. Anyway, can we please get back to the movie?”  
“Sure thing, Mr both.”  
“Can that nickname not stick, please?”  
“Depends on wether you want to open up more, Stevey. You don’t have to now, but over the coming movie nights, the amount you open up will decrease the amount I will use that nickname.”  
“Robin-“  
“Silence, Mr both. I thought you wanted to watch the movie.”  
“Oh my god-“  
“Shut up, Harrington, this is a good part and you’re going to miss it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love bi Steve so so much I’m so sorry.  
Robin is pushy but she’s the kind of friend who wants the best for her buds so she wants Steve to open up and actually start to move on, she doesn’t mean to be annoying. Well, not on purpose at least.  
Finding 80s movies that I have watched that predate 1985 is difficult. I’m working on it though, I swear.  
Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> This is gonna have chapters! Each chapter is gonna be them watching each movie, and I’m gonna need suggestions so please comment them if you know any classic 80s movies (pre 1986 of course)! Hope you enjoyed! This is only my second fic, and first one with chapters, so let’s see how this goes together, shall we?


End file.
